Tina Moore - Bobby Moore - By the Person Who Knew Him Best

So Bobby’s first-team debut brought mixed feelings. He was thrilled, but sorry it had happened because of Malcolm’s illness. Malcolm, for his part, didn’t bear a grudge. Bobby was his favourite son. Who better to replace him?

Five days after Bobby’s dream debut, the complete opposite happened against Nottingham Forest. He had a terrible game, with the huge crowd shouting to the Forest players, ‘Play on the left-half, that’s the weak link.’ West Ham lost 4-0. Bobby bought an evening paper at Nottingham station and the report on his performance was so damning that he tore it up. He hadn’t any inkling that the last thing I’d be interested in was the football results.

Anyway, I had my own cross to bear. Having spent all afternoon preparing for our date and having my hair specially set for the occasion, I went to meet him at King’s Cross. In those days it was a sooty Victorian edifice with iron gates controlling access to the platforms and huge steam engines fuelled by coal. When I heard the familiar grinding of the wheels and saw Bobby’s train chugging to a stop, I decided to position myself where the steam gently wafted from the engine. I had visions of the mist slowly lifting and me emerging like the mysterious heroine of a romantic movie into a bedazzled Bobby’s path. Sadly, that was not to be. The steam had other ideas and I came out looking like orphan Annie, with the hair that had been so carefully coiffed hanging limp and damp round my forlorn face.

I did think Bobby was great-looking, of course. He didn’t have spots - well, occasionally a couple, but only very, very small ones. He was a terrific dancer; whatever he did, he had to be Mr Perfect. We used to kiss in time to the music. It was heady stuff! Looking back, though, it was so innocent.

The reason I found him a bit square was probably that he’d led a very disciplined life compared to most boys in the Fifties. He and the amber-eyed Harry were around the same age, but Bobby seemed not much more than a baby, really.

Doris was the dominant figure in the Moore marriage and in Bobby’s childhood, and she was fiercely protective of him. She called him ‘My Robert’. She was a very strong character and I think she recognized a similar strength in me. It was a while before we had a relaxed, easy relationship. In contrast, I got on immediately with Bobby’s dad, Big Bob. He was a gas-fitter and came from Poplar. He was much more Cockney than Doris, was prematurely bald and liked clowning around and wearing silly hats. His childhood had been tough - he lost his father in World War One - but he was a lovely, kind man with a wonderful twinkle in his eye. He was straight-talking with it, though. He would tell you if he thought you were wrong.

In some ways Doris, who was always known as Doss, was a bit of a rebel by her family’s standards. Most of them were Salvation Army. They used to go out on a Sunday carrying the Good Book, singing the hymns and wearing the bonnets - the whole ten yards, in fact. Maybe Doss started off by going with them but decided it wasn’t for her - she was an independent-minded individual. Even so, she and Big Bob were very upright, God-fearing people.

Their terraced house in Waverley Gardens had a front fence where Big Bob always chained his bike. The first time I stayed round there, I was put in the box room. Doss cornered me there. ‘Any girl,’ she said, ‘who gets My Robert into trouble will have me to deal with.’

My mother was absolutely furious when I told her. Floored, livid and silent with rage. But she soon recovered her powers of speech. ‘You weren’t brought up to be a floozy!’ she gasped.

She was right. I was an innocent. Bobby and I did our courting in the pre-pill era. A girl I had been to school with died after a back-street abortion. I read about it in the local paper and felt horrified and frightened. But Doss’s words hung over me. I never got Her Robert into trouble.

Neither Doss nor Big Bob smoked or drank alcohol and Bobby realized that my mother was much more worldly and sophisticated than them. When the time came for him to introduce them to the mother of the girl he loved, he bought gin and wine for them to serve. Meanwhile, my mother had realized that Doss and Bob Moore were teetotallers. Wanting to make a good impression, she said, ‘I’d love a cup of tea’ when Doss asked her what she would have.

Equally beside herself to impress, Doss came back with, ‘Cow’s milk, sterilized or condensed?’ It became a running joke between Bobby and me whenever anyone asked what we’d like to drink.

Actually, Doss could never accept that Bobby could put away a lager or four. If he’d had too many, she’d say he was ‘under the weather’. Quite a few years later, one Christmas after Bobby and I were married, he and a lot of the other West Ham lads went out at lunchtime to celebrate the festive season. Christmas Eve always seemed to be a bit of a nightmare for me. There’d been a couple of times earlier when the turkey, West Ham’s annual Christmas present, would go walkabout instead of coming home. Each time it would be spotted sitting on the bar, with Bobby ordering a lager for himself ‘and a gin and tonic for the bird’. They’d eventually find their way home with the turkey propped up in the front seat.

On this particular occasion, Bobby and I were due to go to a function in the West End that night but by mid-afternoon, when he and the turkey still hadn’t made it home, I began ringing round all his known haunts. Eventually I tracked him down to the Globe in Stepney and reminded him about the function.

‘I’ll be home in twenty minutes,’ he said.

I waited for an hour, then rang again. ‘Don’t worry,’ said my increasingly merry husband, ‘I’ll finish my drink and be on my way.’

So I waited another hour, then rang again. ‘If you don’t come home right now, I’ll tell your parents to come and get you,’ I said.

Even that didn’t flush him out, so I carried out my threat. Doss and Big Bob duly set out for the Globe, where they advanced on him from the rear. Doss laid a hand on his shoulder and said, ‘Home, son.’

‘Mum,’ said Bobby as they escorted him out, ‘I’m 31.’

Doss turned and said to the assembled company, ‘He isn’t usually like this, you know. He’s been under the weather lately.’

Bobby was their only child, and Doss and Big Bob adored him. He was Mr Perfect, their reason for being. The only bad thing he’d ever done was pee in a milk bottle - disgusting! Doss was involved in everything Bobby did, from supporting him at every single match he played in to washing, bleaching and scrubbing his laces with a nailbrush to make sure they stayed sparkling white, then ironing them.

It was Big Bob and Doss who took me to Upton Park for my first visit. I’d never been to a match before and I couldn’t believe the number of people there. We sat in D Block with all the other players’ families, behind the Directors Box, and Doss barely took her eyes off Bobby the whole game. She kept shouting, ‘Unload him! Unload him!’ I thought it was a technical term.

Doss had been very pretty as a girl; she’d won a beauty contest and you could see who Bobby got his looks from. Our daughter, Roberta, has inherited her lovely nose. And she was a very good woman: unaffected, modest, generous to those she loved, and natural. But she was a Scorpio and a typical one in some ways. She would harbour grudges. If anyone said anything bad about Her Robert, that would be it for them. They’d be completely cut out, for good and all time.

It wasn’t just her looks that were handed down to Bobby. A lot of his personality traits, like his repressed, uptight side, came from her, too. They were both strict with themselves, both terribly disciplined, almost obsessively immaculate. Even after a late, lager-fuelled night, Bobby would get a clothes brush out and brush his whole suit down before turning in. Everything he did had to be faultless, and that was his mother’s way too.